Human Design | Sirius Black

xxxxiv. Reality Comes Crashing Down

tw: homophobia and slurs.

WHEN MAGGIE CAME home a few hours after the police had left. Rick had gone straight from his shift at work to help her from the hospital (even though she declared repetitively that she was just fine on her own) whilst Reece cleaned up the best he could.

 When Zeke had left to the drag show and he was alone, he grew extremely frustrated knowing that he could fix most of the damage with magic, but, of course, he couldn't because how would he explain the windows and furniture fixing themselves, not to mention that MACUSA had stricter laws about using magic around Muggles and the last thing Reece needed was trouble with the Magical Law Enforcement Department. Therefore, he had to settle for cleaning out the floor of glass, alcohol, and wood splinters and barring up the windows with strand board and flattened cardboard boxes he found from the storage room.

   None of them went to sleep early that night. It was well past three in the morning when the four still sat in a booth, drinking tea or beer. Reece was much more tired than he should have been, but he didn't want to be the first to retire upstairs, and he got the sense the others felt the same way. Maggie's close friends, Patty and Miss Sherry, had been there until one, and since they had left, the group had fallen into a resigned silence that was barely broken. Reece stared out of the window, one of the ones that wasn't broken and boarded up, following a man on his cycle for the few seconds it took for him to get past the building.

   Maggie yawned and then winced. "I'm fine," she said impatiently before anybody else could speak a word, "stop fussing about me. "My health is not what I'm worried about; it's the business; sure, we'll get insurance money, but it'll be expensive to buy everything back, and it'll be difficult to keep afloat through the winter,  especially now that there are only a few days of Pride left, and we've lost most of the earnings. And we'll have to buy those CCTV cameras for the future." A frown pulled at her lips, and then she stood up, sighing. "Well, I think it's time I go to bed."

   She went to pick up her empty mug, but Reece snatched it up before she could, climbing out of the booth himself. "I'll take it."

   He walked to the bar to wash the mug, hearing her sigh behind him. "Now, really, I don't need you all doting on me as I've never been hurt before," she said impatiently. "I'm just fine, how many times should I tell you three that? Those little delinquents didn't do nothing; I'm alive and on my own two feet, aren't I?"

   "Maggie, your standard of being fine can't just be not being dead," Reece said as he soaped the mug, scrubbing the tea rings out of the inside with a dish brush.

   "Can well be," she contradicted. "When you grew up in the generation I did, being black was bad enough, and if you were queer ... well, let's just say that making it to thirty would be an accomplishment. I'm fifty-four, that alone is more than I ever expected to be given in this life." Reece frowned, but she gave a concluding sigh before he got the chance to speak. "Well, I'm going to hit the bed," she said, and then quickly added with a pointed finger at Rick, who had been about to stand up, "and I will walk up the stairs fine on my own, thank you very much."

   All three of them watched her go, but didn't follow after her to help because she would probably have smacked the first person who tried. When they had heard the final distant creak of the wooden staircase, Rick turned to Zeke. "Did the cops do anything?"

   "Other than one of them taking a Corona without paying for it, not really," Reece answered, walking back to the booth to finish his own tea. "They looked around –" he drew inverted commas with his left hand, the right one holding his mug "– and said there wasn't enough evidence to do anything, more or less said that the pride flag outside is as good a large sign that says 'please break in'."